Myer looks forward to better 2015

Speaking after the release of Myer's lacklustre third quarter sales results, Mr Brookes said the department store's sales would increase next year once refurbishment work at major stores and new store opening are complete.

Myer expects to lift sales by $100 million in 2014/15 and Mr Brookes expects costs, which have risen considerably in the last few years, to flatten out, providing a boost to the bottom line.

"All of the costs we've had in the prior couple of years are not repeated in 2015 and that's what helps us significantly," he told reporters.

Mr Brookes expects staff wages to rise around two per cent in 2015, below the five per cent growth seen in recent years, while operating costs are expected to fall following the end of refurbishment work.

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Myer is currently refurbishing four stores: Adelaide City, Brisbane's Indooroopilly and Miranda and Macquarie in Sydney, and plans to open new stores at Mt Gravatt in Brisbane and Joondalup in Perth by Christmas.

It is also expanding its flagship Melbourne store, adding an extra 7,000 square metres of floor space as part of the adjacent Emporium development.

The department store on Friday blamed the refurbishment work for a one per cent slide in its third quarter sales to $646 million.

"That was almost solely due to the impact of refurbishments," Mr Brookes said.

Excluding the impact of the refurbishments, sales were up 0.24 per cent for the quarter, he said.

Myer shares fell 4.5 cents, or two per cent, to $2.12 on Friday in the wake of the figures.

Mr Brookes said the slide in sales would not impact Myer's expectations of a flat second half profit result.

"We said GP (gross profit) would be flat in the second half, that reflected the fact that we knew we'd be re-engineering some of the business, so therefore (there is) no further degradation at all from a profitability point of view, we'd already calculated that in."